Political round up.............

First topic message reminder :

Soft thread split, hard thread split, no-deal thread split. Who gives a sh!t as long as we get a thread split by the 15:35 deadline.

SecretFly wrote:

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:

I'll say it again: it's a fallacy that everyone who wants to leave the EU is happy to leave with no deal.

There are dozens of MPs (as witnessed by today's vote), and no doubt millions of people in the UK, who want to the leave the EU but certainly don't want to leave without a deal.

It's not remainers alone taking no deal off the table, but leavers too. That's the truth of it.

It's also a fallacy to think everyone that publically says they want to respect the Referendum vote actually means it or doesn't intend doing anything in their power to help effect a final Remain decision.  Delay is the key.  I've said it before, for so many people who claim boredom and frustration with the process, they don't half like choosing the longest route through ever sequence of negotiations.  No Deal off the table means yet another extension.  Bravo say the people who cling to their Remain dreams.

Don't you think it's worth it?

A good number of MPs acknowledge that the government has a duty to everyone in the country, regardless of how they voted in the referendum, to make leaving as smooth and as pain-free as possible. Fortunately, only a minority think we should leave without a deal just because it's taking a long time.

You believe that (minority want to leave without Deal) you don't know it.  You hope it, you don't know it.  

If you knew it, you'd be able to tell me the result of a new Referendum right now.  You can't.  That's why the Labour Party have tried sitting on the fence for so long.  Trying to work out how many votes they'd get if they chose a specific side.

Delay Only assists Remain hopers.  It certainly doesn't assist people who simply want the process over and the Leave vote effected.
Delays are designed for Remainers.  Simple.

Keeping No Deal exit on the table would be a really clever negotiating ploy from the UK, if it wasn't something that actually damaged the UK far more than the EU. It's like trying to negotiate with someone and then threatening to punch yourself.

It Must Be Love wrote:Keeping No Deal exit on the table would be a really clever negotiating ploy from the UK, if it wasn't something that actually damaged the UK far more than the EU. It's like trying to negotiate with someone and then threatening to punch yourself.

Yeah the only people who think that keeping no deal as an option is a good idea are the ones who learned their negotiating skills from Blazing Saddles

SecretFly wrote:

lostinwales wrote:


How long does that mandate stay in place? One year? 3? 5?. Some would claim it is permanent, because, you know, apparently democratic decisions can't be changed. The whole process is such a monumental man sausage up.

I'd hope that common decency and good law might decide that before a democratic decision is changed, that the decision itself is affirmed and abided by, carried out and adopted.
In other words, you'd hope and pray that the Party that wins a General Election, legally, is allowed a period in power before someone decides that they shouldn't be allowed take power, that the electorate might have changed their minds after a week, and that in the interests of fairness, another election should be called immediately after the first one ended - or worse still, just ignore the election altogether and let the outgoing Party that ruled before election continue on uninterrupted - the electorate didn't really want a change of government at all - signed Intellectual superior class.

So, in your case, it's forever.

SecretFly wrote:

CaledonianCraig wrote:

SecretFly wrote:Tying their negotiator's hands behind his back again even before he's elected.

Nice.  No wonder the talk in the EU is of the British being a bunch of idiots turning up each time to negotiate impossible things ( NOT my option at all btw) Smug and sneering Eurocrats know their game - and that British Parliament, running counter to the declared wish of its people, are shooting every Prime Minister in the foot - as you can in no way negotiate with strength IF your rival (EU) is already aware that your hardest line is a bluff that your own Parliament won't allow.  That's just not smart stuff from British parliamentarians with supposedly British interests at heart.  But of course some of them have long since turned.  EU allegiance before UK loyalty.

Election is the only way out I suppose if Leave continues to be declared goal of both contenders.

I cannot see an election solving anything. At present the nailed on result would be a hung parliament with the leading party ending up msybe 30 or 40 seats short of an overall majority. That would just complicate things further.

So what then?  Boris or Hunt accept the same Deal that May lost her Premiership on and couldn't get through that Parliament how many times?
There has to be movement.  So what is the movement?  It would be a very smug bunch of Parliamentary 'toffs' that might try to decide that their wishes to just Remain should bury the declared Referendum wish of the majority in the UK electorate to Leave.
More delays is seen amongst Leavers for what it is.... a drive to enforce a final Remain solution onto their Leave decision.  They're not dumb.

I would say the only way of sorting out this mess is another referendum with two options on offer. May's Deal or No Deal. That way the original referendum result is seen to being honoured. Leave it up to the people as the politicians cannot agree.

CaledonianCraig wrote:...

I would say the only way of sorting out this mess is another referendum with two options on offer. May's Deal or No Deal. That way the original referendum result is seen to being honoured. Leave it up to the people as the politicians cannot agree.

Now you are just trolling

lostinwales wrote:

CaledonianCraig wrote:...

I would say the only way of sorting out this mess is another referendum with two options on offer. May's Deal or No Deal. That way the original referendum result is seen to being honoured. Leave it up to the people as the politicians cannot agree.

Now you are just trolling

No I am not.

Okay if it floats your boat throw a third option on the referendum of Remain but earn the wrath of those who will swear it is undemocratic. A referendum though, whatever the choices in it, is the only way to end this impasse.

SecretFly wrote:Delay Only assists Remain hopers.  It certainly doesn't assist people who simply want the process over and the Leave vote effected.
Delays are designed for Remainers.  Simple.

As I've said, fortunately there are enough MPs, Remainers and Leavers,  who aren't prepared to accept the damage of a no deal Brexit just because it gets the process over with*.




* - Not that it would get things over with anyway - a deal would still need to be struck once we'd left.

In my view people should stick to facts and stick to the political process. There are too many unsupported assertions and claims being made which are mainly arising from posters pushing their own political partisanship / political worldview.

For example in any negotiation you don't hamstring the negotiaters.  That is basic 101 business studies.  So claiming that taking "no deal" off the table and this NOT affecting the negotiations is not true.  At the end of the day the EU itself still has to get agreement with the major players in the EU (e.g. Germany and France) and a No Deal position can act as leverage in getting a deal.

Now you can at a personal level absolutely not want a no deal and would prefer to remain - but that should not prevent you from thinking straight (impartially) over the matter.

No name Bertie wrote:In my view people should stick to facts and stick to the political process. There are too many unsupported assertions and claims being made which are mainly arising from posters pushing their own political partisanship / political worldview.

For example in any negotiation you don't hamstring the negotiaters.  That is basic 101 business studies.  So claiming that taking "no deal" off the table and this NOT affecting the negotiations is not true.  At the end of the day the EU itself still has to get agreement with the major players in the EU (e.g. Germany and France) and a No Deal position can act as leverage in getting a deal.

Now you can at a personal level absolutely not want a no deal and would prefer to remain - but that should not prevent you from thinking straight (impartially) over the matter.

If Parliament won't accept no deal, what use is there in saying to Brussels that you're prepared to do something your own parliament won't allow you to do?

What use is a bluff if the other side know it's a bluff?

No name Bertie wrote:In my view people should stick to facts and stick to the political process. There are too many unsupported assertions and claims being made which are mainly arising from posters pushing their own political partisanship / political worldview.

For example in any negotiation you don't hamstring the negotiaters.  That is basic 101 business studies.  So claiming that taking "no deal" off the table and this NOT affecting the negotiations is not true.  At the end of the day the EU itself still has to get agreement with the major players in the EU (e.g. Germany and France) and a No Deal position can act as leverage in getting a deal.

Now you can at a personal level absolutely not want a no deal and would prefer to remain - but that should not prevent you from thinking straight (impartially) over the matter.

Again, can people stop pretending there are only these two camps?

Luckless Pedestrian wrote: If Parliament won't accept no deal, what use is there in saying to Brussels that you're prepared to do something your own parliament won't allow you to do?

What use is a bluff if the other side know it's a bluff?

If Parliament won't accept "no deal" that is a different scenario. If Parliament can't be temporarily suspended and a no deal enforced - that is another scenario. Read what I said - don't change the context.

Luckless Pedestrian wrote:

No name Bertie wrote:In my view people should stick to facts and stick to the political process. There are too many unsupported assertions and claims being made which are mainly arising from posters pushing their own political partisanship / political worldview.

For example in any negotiation you don't hamstring the negotiaters.  That is basic 101 business studies.  So claiming that taking "no deal" off the table and this NOT affecting the negotiations is not true.  At the end of the day the EU itself still has to get agreement with the major players in the EU (e.g. Germany and France) and a No Deal position can act as leverage in getting a deal.

Now you can at a personal level absolutely not want a no deal and would prefer to remain - but that should not prevent you from thinking straight (impartially) over the matter.

Again, can people stop pretending there are only these two camps?

Paragraph three follows from paragraph two and the whole comment follows from the exchange of posts preceding it. Don't change the context.

No name Bertie wrote:

Luckless Pedestrian wrote: If Parliament won't accept no deal, what use is there in saying to Brussels that you're prepared to do something your own parliament won't allow you to do?

What use is a bluff if the other side know it's a bluff?

If Parliament won't accept "no deal" that is a different scenario.  If Parliament can't be temporarily suspended and a no deal enforced - that is another scenario.  Read what I said - don't change the context.

Do you mean 'can'?
Just reading what you said

No deal is monumentally stupid and something we have not prepared for. Threatening it is just a case of choosing which part of our anatomy that we want to shoot. No deal was also not something people were seriously talking about until a long way through the process. It had no meaning to the bulk of the referendum voters, who, of course, had been told that the deal with the EU would be 'the easiest in history'.

Even now the talk of our own choice on 'no deal' seem to be about taking it away from people whose job it is to have some kind of idea (MP's ha ha) and giving back to the people in the hope that there are enough fantasists and idiots to support the minority who really want it.

Its not even that there is a negotiating table we can go to and threaten with this. The negotiations for this stage, as far as the EU are concerned, are done. No deal will just mean we walk away now.

My own view is that as soon as David Cameron resigned he effectively voided the Referendum Result - because the Referendum was predicated on David Cameron steering Britain through the Brexit process.

In resigning he also voided the 2015 General Election - because a key part of his election manifesto was that he would give the public an opportunity for an in/out vote - the results of which was voided (in my view) because of him resigning.

But for some reason this was never considered - instead there was political infighting and meltdown with the media taking sides (project fear or we must still leave EU) plus treating it as a soap opera.

lostinwales wrote:It had no meaning to the bulk of the referendum voters, who, of course, had been told that the deal with the EU would be 'the easiest in history'.

Should, not would. And this was said in the summer of 2017, long after the referendum campaign was over.

No name Bertie wrote:My own view is that as soon as David Cameron resigned he effectively voided the Referendum Result - because the Referendum was predicated on David Cameron steering Britain through the Brexit process.  

I disagree with this. As someone who had been so prominent in the Remain Campaign, David Cameron would have had no credibility to take us through Brexit. When he resigned he probably thought that a Brexiter like Gove, Davis, or Boris would take over and lead us through Brexit.
I'm almost certain that had he stayed on, people would be criticising him for being addicted to power while he had no legitimacy.

No name Bertie wrote:
For example in any negotiation you don't hamstring the negotiaters.  That is basic 101 business studies.  So claiming that taking "no deal" off the table and this NOT affecting the negotiations is not true.  At the end of the day the EU itself still has to get agreement with the major players in the EU (e.g. Germany and France) and a No Deal position can act as leverage in getting a deal.

I did agree with you on this point, however I read up No Deal in more detail, and the outcome is so bad for the UK that it's unfortunately not a negotiating tool that can be used in our favour, however much we bluffed or spun it.

Another thing that has become clear - apart from David Cameron being revealed as a "political chancer / gambler" is the general incompetence of the political leaders / parliamentarians and the failure of the British media (especially the BBC) to inform the public in a non-partisan way.

It is now clear that those in the know would have known from the outset that disengaging from the EU was going to be a lengthy process - longer than a single Parliamentarian session - and the withdrawal should have been a lengthy phased process.

It Must Be Love wrote:

No name Bertie wrote:My own view is that as soon as David Cameron resigned he effectively voided the Referendum Result - because the Referendum was predicated on David Cameron steering Britain through the Brexit process.  

I disagree with this. As someone who had been so prominent in the Remain Campaign, David Cameron would have had no credibility to take us through Brexit. When he resigned he probably thought that a Brexiter like Gove, Davis, or Boris would take over and lead us through Brexit.
I'm almost certain that had he stayed on, people would be criticising him for being addicted to power while he had no legitimacy.

There was a period before the terms of the referendum was set when Cameron went off to Strasbourg or Brussels to get a better deal - when Cameron was being more neutral. Only once he got his claimed better deal and set the terms for the referedum did he switch to remain and became stronger remainer as the referendum campaign developed. But in all of that he still said he would honour the result and would do what the British people asked of him.

When he resigned the whole British political system went into meltdown - it was a huge shock to everyone. That shock is an indicator of how important he was viewed as a political leader who knew what he was doing - including giving the people the in/out referedum choice.

No name Bertie wrote:My own view is that as soon as David Cameron resigned he effectively voided the Referendum Result - because the Referendum was predicated on David Cameron steering Britain through the Brexit process.  

In resigning he also voided the 2015 General Election - because a key part of his election manifesto was that he would give the public an opportunity for an in/out vote - the results of which was voided (in my view) because of him resigning.

But for some reason this was never considered - instead there was political infighting and meltdown with the media taking sides (project fear or we must still leave EU) plus treating it as a soap opera.

The running of the process has been so shambolic. Hence discussion on how long the Brexit mandate should last (or even how valid it was, given the problems around the ref).

There is an interesting article on Brexit on the beeb - 10 reasons why it hasn't happened. It seems that the EU were expecting tough negotiations but instead found we had no plans and no idea.

The very sad thing in all of this is that the public have been allowed to become deeply polarised - where judging from what I have seen on social media - ordinary people are ending up hating each other - with the creation of stereotypes and people viewing this as a moral issue.  The British media have fed this polarisation while our politicians seem to have been too inward focused and too divided to know what to do.

That is why I would like to have a giant pause button pressed.

Well here we are then, the week when the big announcement is made: who is the next leader of the Liberal Democrats!

According to Gordon Brown, an unstoppable phase of massive solar flares will occur on the Sun that may indeed turn the UK into a lifeless, desolate burning ember ...IF Boris leaves the EU without a Deal.

You've been warned Boris, by the man who shared a cabinet table with a Prime Minister that had a good shot at turning Iraq into a lifeless, desolate burning ember.  So Brown knows what he's talking about in the 'Doom' spins!

Maybe he's letting loose a plan in the making?  Maybe it's a threat rather than a warning.  Him and Blair are good at those.... the sly 'concerned citizen' threats.

I'm fairly sure you can protect yourself from solar flares with one of your many tinfoil hats.

In fairness, Gordon Brown's article does appear to have been unintentionally amusing (N.B. I haven't read it myself, I'm only going by what others have said about it). Saying what would happen on 1st November, 2nd November, 3rd, 4th... wouldn't those things be more likely to happen all at once, rather than in an orderly one-at-a-time manner?

Again, I haven't read it myself.

It really will be interesting to see the make up of Johnson's cabinet (I can't seeing it being Hunt). On the one hand, he's said in a Conservative Home interview that every member of his cabinet would have to be 'reconciled to' leaving with no deal if Hallowe'en approaches without the prospect of a new deal, but when a prime minister has such a minute majority, can he really afford not to have a broad spread of opinion represented in cabinet, to try and stave off the prospect of rebellion? He'll need all the friends he can get on the Tory benches.

It remains to be seen how much of what Johnson's said over the last few months he actually means - and how forgiving those MPs (and party members) who believed him will be over anything he reneges on. He really has boxed himself in on a lot of things. just as Theresa May did.

Maybe he's turned over a new leaf and now means everything he says....

Given the political shambles in dealing with this (along with my view the original referendum was voided with David Cameron resigning) - I think a very good argument could be made for a second referendum that at least gives the options of the type of exit people would prefer that includes a full custom union.  

Negotiations should be had with the EU - telling the EU a second referendum will be given to the British people that provides various options - and then try to get the EU to agree to the various options to be put to the British people (fine details can be worked out after the second referendum).  

This is at least the type of policy Labour should commit to - in supposedly providing a realistic alternative to the conservative "policy".   Maybe there could be a cross-party consensus if someone is prepared to campaign for this.

So there we have it:

Boris Johnson – 92,153

Jeremy Hunt – 46,656

Not the margin of victory some had predicted.

Yougov..

How do you feel about Boris Johnson as PM ??

Happy 13%
Contented 15%
Disappointed 8%
Dismayed 48%

Off to a Flyer..

I'm happy for the Tories that they're getting a bit of a pick-me-up, but I don't see how having a new prime minister changes things without parliament also changing, which would require a general election.

And honestly, haven't we heard Johnson's mantras before? 'We can get a great deal, and if we don't we'll leave regardless?' Is he more trustworthy than the last prime minister to give us that line?

A racist bigoted misogynist is a pick me up ??

If Corbyn threatened Communism I wouldn't vote for Johnson..

So a bunch of unelected people just installed our new PM. Where's the outcry from the Leavers who call the EU anti-democratic?

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:A racist bigoted misogynist is a pick me up ??

If Corbyn threatened Communism I wouldn't vote for Johnson..

Ah, but he's an optimistic racist bigoted misogynist. He 'believes in Britain'.

You're right there..

Suppose the fact Trump has a 50% chance according to experts of being re-elected.

Shows we are heading for new waters.

Rather than moaning in your echo chambers you should make a stand and march to downing street with your accusations. Otherwise you will be just emulating this guy:


But you only moan and whinge in order to attack posters who just might disagree with your hysterical pronouncments.

You and I have very different ideas of what these boards are for, Bertie.

I don't want everyone that posts on here to agree with me. If they did, I doubt I'd hang around.

No name Bertie wrote:Rather than moaning in your echo chambers you should make a stand and march to downing street

Yeah, 'cos that would make a difference. You really think it's worth my time and money to go to Downing Street to shout 'Boris, you're an idiot"? What purpose could that possibly serve? A million people could do it and it would still make no difference.

No name Bertie wrote:Rather than moaning in your echo chambers you should make a stand and march to downing street with your accusations.   Otherwise you will be just emulating this guy:


But you only moan and whinge in order to attack posters who just might disagree with your hysterical pronouncments.

More of a sigh than a whinge Bertie old boy...

What country did Yasmin Alibhai Brown emigrate to tonight?

JuliusHMarx wrote:So a bunch of unelected people just installed our new PM. Where's the outcry from the Leavers who call the EU anti-democratic?

The Leavers are a nutty 'minority' at this point though...wasn't that the gist of it these past months? The majority it now with Remainers, Remain un-Leavers and Eternity Backstop Stay-in EU Dealers.

So nothing to worry about.  Remainers love a good old-fashioned anti-Democratic Eurotype unelected Election.  The majority are delighted that Boris is an unelected PM

SecretFly wrote:

JuliusHMarx wrote:So a bunch of unelected people just installed our new PM. Where's the outcry from the Leavers who call the EU anti-democratic?

The Leavers are a nutty 'minority' at this point though...wasn't that the gist of it these past months?

Er, no. That's you attempting to misrepresent things. Again.

The idiot minority?

The non-intellectually mature minority?

The 'we all agree on exactly what Brexit we want' majority.

The majority 'we want a deal that would allow us to leave without leaving' like the process that non-elected Boris though, to get back to the detail of your initial point.

Anyway, a glass of champagne for Boris. He might turn out to be a quickly folding dud in 'negotiations' but for now, I'll hope that he remembers to bring his teeth with him, unlike May who kept forgetting to pack hers.

SecretFly wrote:What country did Yasmin Alibhai Brown emigrate to tonight?

Not sure, but if she's taken prisoner let's hope the new Foreign Secretary doesn't man sausage-up any release deal.